These are not, however, the circumstances in which demands for population transfers arise in the real world. Firstly, they are proposed not in an environment of peace and stability but in circumstances of crisis, when the perceived need for rapid and radical solutions is paramount. Secondly, when deciding who must be transferred and who is to be allowed to remain, they invariably involve a search for a scapegoat: “troublesome” minorities are the ones that must leave, not sympathetic ones. Thirdly, national governments and international organizations are rarely interested in diverting the massive amounts of money, logistical facilities, and personnel that are required, for as long as may be required, to succor “troublesome” peoples who are perceived as being at least in part the authors of their own misfortunes. Fourthly, if a transfer is not accomplished quickly, the crisis—and, still more importantly, the hostility toward the targeted population—that gave rise to it is apt to diminish or disappear. This is true of even the bitterest conflicts: it is impossible to conceive of the Western Allies, for example, giving their sanction to a mass clearance of the ethnic Germans if the proposal had been made to them in 1950 rather than 1945. Fifthly, the expelled population is unlikely in all circumstances to acquiesce as tamely in its own removal as did the Germans after the Second World War, or to cease pressing for a “right of return”; indeed, it is arguable that it was only because the experience of living under a totalitarian system had already so grievously weakened the capacity for political organization of the expellees that the operation was made possible in the first place. Finally, as David Curp points out, quite apart from their disruptive economic consequences population transfers are no panacea for the expelling countries themselves. Rather, they are dangerously disruptive expedients whose baleful effects live on in the supposedly “purified” national community, decades after the crisis that gave rise to them has passed.
The immediate suffering produced by ethnic cleansing is appalling, but is not necessarily its most dangerous effect. An equally, if not more, disturbing aspect of ethnic cleansing is its capacity to generate a self-perpetuating radicalization and popularization of nationally revolutionary politics.
Nationally revolutionary ethnic cleansing … led to [the] embrace of xenophobic politics. It also indoctrinated successive generations with extremist nationalism…. Ethnic cleansing is a fearfully stabilizing force, capable of sustaining the hatreds and fears that ethnic conflicts generate long after expulsions have been carried out. Instead of being a “clean sweep,” ethnic cleansing is a nationally revolutionary force par excellence that reinforces the national foundations of ethnic conflicts it appears to destroy.29
The most important lesson of the expulsion of the Germans, then, is that if these operations cannot be carried out under circumstances in which brutality, injustice, and needless suffering are inevitable, they cannot be carried out at all. A firm appreciation of this truth, and a determination to be guided by it at all times and in every situation, however enticing the alternative may momentarily seem, is the most appropriate memorial that can be erected to this tragic, unnecessary, and, we must resolve, never to be repeated episode in Europe’s and the world’s recent history.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. T. Petersen, Flucht und Vertreibung aus Sicht der deutschen, polnischen und tschechischen Bevölkerung (Bonn: Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2005), p. 62.
CHAPTER 1. THE PLANNER
1. The Times, October 7, 1938.
2. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938), p. 279.
3. Quoted in M. J. Heimann, Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 47.
4. J. W. Bruegel, Czechoslovakia Before Munich: The German Minority Problem and British Appeasement Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 65.
5. R. Jakobson, “Problems of Language in Masaryk’s Writings,” in J. Novák, ed., On Masaryk: Texts in English and German (Amsterdam: Rodipi, 1988), pp. 72–3.
6. R. Vansittart, Manchester Guardian, April 15, 1944.
7. See J. Bradley, “Czechoslovakia: External Crisis and Internal Compromise,” in D. Berg-Schlosser and J. Mitchell, eds., Conditions of Democracy in Europe, 1919–39: Systematic Case Studies (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), esp. pp. 90–1.
8. T. Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 107, 121.
9. Z. A. B. Zeman, “Czechoslovakia Between the Wars: Democracy on Trial,” in J. Morison, ed., The Czech and Slovak Experience (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), p. 165.
10. Zahra, Kidnapped Souls, p. 112.
11. Quoted in Bruegel, Czechoslovakia Before Munich, p. 79.
12. Quoted in L. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), p. 161.
13. For a detailed analysis of the means by which this image was propagated, see A. Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
14. “A German Bohemian Deputy,” “National Minorities in Europe: The German Minority in Czechoslovakia,” Slavonic and East European Review 41 (January 1936): 297–8.
15. Heimann, Czechoslovakia, p. 73.
16. U. Völklein, “Mitleid war von niemand zu erwarten”: Das Schicksal der deutschen Vertriebenen (Munich: Droemer, 2005), p. 10.
17. See, e.g., C. Boyer et al., “Die Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront (Partei), 1933–1938: Zur Bestimmung ihres politisch-ideologischen Standortes,” Bohemia 38:2 (1997): 357–385; R. M. Smelser, The Sudeten Problem, 1933–1938: Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1975).
18. M. Cornwall, “‘A Leap into Ice-Cold Water’: The Manoeuvres of the Henlein Movement in Czechoslovakia, 1933–1938,” in M. Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans, eds., Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe 1918–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 141.
19. Heimann, Czechoslovakia, p. 60.
20. See I. Lukes, “Stalin and Czechoslovakia in 1938–39: An Autopsy of a Myth,” in I. Lukes and E. Goldstein, eds., The Munich Crisis, 1938: Prelude to World War II (London: Cass, 1999), pp. 13–47.
21. P. Neville, Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt to Prevent the Second World War (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), p. 117; speech by Churchill, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 339, col. 364 (October 5, 1938).
22. Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 5th ser., vol. 110, col. 1306 (October 3, 1938).
23. Heimann, Czechoslovakia, p. 87.
24. Quoted in Z. A. B. Zeman and A. Klimek, The Life of Edvard Beneš, 1884–1948: Czechoslovakia in Peace and War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 141.
25. M. Hauner, “‘We Must Push Eastwards!’ The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Beneš after Munich,” Journal of Contemporary History 44:4 (October 2009): 619–656.
26. E. Beneš, Odsun Němců: Výbor z pamětí a projevů doplněný ediĉními přílohami (Prague: Spoleĉnost Edvarda Beneše, 1995), pp. 12–13; E. Táborský, “Politics in Exile, 1939–1945,” in V. S. Matamey and R. Luža, eds., A History of the Czechoslovak Republic 1918–1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 332.
27. M. Hauner, “Introduction,” in E. Beneš, The Fall and Rise of a Nation: Czechoslovakia 1938–1941, ed. M. Hauner (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2004), pp. xxiii–xxiv.
28. F. D. Raška, The Czechoslovak Exile Government in London and the Sudeten German Issue (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2002), p. 46.
29. Quoted in Zeman and Klimek, Life of Edvard Beneš, p. 150.
30. C. Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 98, 102.
31. Quoted in Raška, The Czechoslovak Exile Government in London, p. 44.
32. Quoted i
n Bryant, Prague in Black, p. 99.
33. D. Reynolds, “Churchill and the British ‘Decision’ to Fight On in 1940: Right Policy, Wrong Reasons,” in R. Langhorne, ed., Diplomacy and Intelligence During the Second World War: Essays in Honour of F. H. Hinsley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 147–167.
34. Raška, The Czechoslovak Exile Government in London, p. 40.
35. Ibid., p. 51.
36. Ibid., p. 98.
37. E. Beneš, “The New Order in Europe,” Nineteenth Century and After, September 1941, 154.
38. E. Beneš, The War of 1939: Two Addresses of the Czechoslovak President at the Edinburgh and the Glasgow University 5th and 7th November, 1941 (Prague: Spoleĉnost Edvarda Beneše, 2005), p. 28.
39. E. Beneš, “The Organization of Postwar Europe,” Foreign Affairs 20:2 (January 1942): 237–8.
40. Quoted in Zeman and Klimek, Life of Edvard Beneš, p. 183. Emphasis in original.
41. Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, p. 206.
42. R. J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century and After (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 192–3.
43. V. Mastny, The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 215.
44. See, e.g., J. King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 187–8.
45. Quoted in S. A. Garrett, Conscience and Power: An Examination of Dirty Hands and Political Leadership (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), p. 99.
46. K. Jackson, Humphrey Jennings (London: Picador, 2004), pp. 268–9; L. Leff, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 184.
47. A. J. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 22–25.
48. A. F. Noskova, “Migration of the Germans after the Second World War: Political and Psychological Aspects,” Journal of Communist and Transition Politics 16:1–2 (March–June 2000): 98.
49. Foreign Research and Press Service, “The Transfer of German Populations (with Notes on the Relevant Evidence from Previous Exchanges and Transfers),” February 13, 1942, FO 371/30930, PRO.
50. A. Eden, “Anglo-Czechoslovak Relations,” July 2, 1942, quoted in D. Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum “Transfer” der Deutschen aus der Tschechoslowakei und aus Polen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001), p. 168.
51. Noskova, “Migration of the Germans after the Second World War,” 97–8.
52. K. Cordell, Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 170.
53. Quoted in A. J. Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 1942–1948 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 169.
54. N. M. Naimark, “Ethnic Cleansing Between War and Peace,” in A. Weiner, ed., Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 230.
55. Memorandum by Council of Ministers of the Polish government in exile, September 27, 1944, in P. Lippóczy and T. Walichnowski, T., eds. Przesiedlenie ludności niemieckiej z Polski po II wojnie światowej w świetle dokumentów (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), p. 178.
56. New York Times, August 10, 1944.
57. Raška, The Czechoslovak Exile Government in London, p. 103.
58. Ibid., p. 107.
59. Minute by Cadogan, January 20, 1925, FO 371/11070, PRO.
60. P. Wilkinson, Foreign Fields: The Story of an SOE Operative (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), p. 58.
61. P. J. Noel-Baker, “Two Years Ago … And Now,” London Calling, July 11, 1940.
62. D. Brandes, “‘Otázka transferu … Ta je tady Kolumbovo vejce’: Ĉeskoslovenští komunisté a vyhnání Němců,” Ĉeský ĉasopis historický 103:1 (2005): 89.
63. E. Táborský, President Edvard Beneš: Between East and West 1938–1948 (Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1981), p. 161.
64. Quoted in Zeman and Klimek, Life of Edvard Beneš, p. 185.
65. Raška, The Czechoslovak Exile Government in London, p. 58.
66. Quoted in M. Frank, Expelling the Germans: British Opinion and Post-1945 Population Transfer in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 50.
67. Quoted in K. Kersten, “Forced Migration and the Transformation of Polish Society in the Postwar Period,” in P. Ther and A. Siljak, eds., Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 78.
68. Address by Welles at Arlington National Cemetery, Life, June 15, 1942; S. Welles, The Time for Decision (New York: Harper, 1944), p. 355; S. Welles, Where Are We Heading? (London: Hutchinson, 1947), p. 108.
69. Quoted in C. Wrigley, A. J. P. Taylor: Radical Historian of Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. 141.
70. Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 5th ser., vol. 126, cols. 555–6 (March 10, 1943).
71. Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 5th ser., vol. 130, col. 1116 (March 8, 1944).
72. See R. M. Douglas, The Labour Party, Nationalism and Internationalism, 1939–1951 (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 84–86.
73. Labour Party, National Executive Committee, The International Post-War Settlement: Report by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party to be Presented to the Annual Conference to be Held in London from May 29th to June 2nd, 1944 (London: Co-Operative Printing Society, 1944), p. 5.
74. Labour Party, Report of the Forty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Labour Party (London: Co-Operative Printing Society, 1945), p. 114.
75. Quoted in D. Brandes, “Edvard Beneš und die Pläne zur Vertreibung/Aussiedlung der Deutschen und Ungarn 1938–1945,” in G. Zand and J. Holý, eds., Transfer–Vertreibung–Aussiedlung im Kontext der tschechischen Literatur (Brno: Aktion, 2004), pp. 21–2.
76. Labour Party, National Executive Committee, The International Post-War Settlement, p. 5.
77. Editorial, “Labour and the Post-War Settlement,” Socialist Commentary, June 1944.
78. Labour Party, Report of the Forty-Fourth Annual Conference, p. 135.
79. The Economist, January 17, 1942.
80. Ibid., July 10, 1943.
81. A. G. B. Fisher and D. Mitrany, “Some Notes on the Transfer of Populations,” Political Quarterly 14:4 (October–December 1943): 370. Emphasis in original in first quote.
82. E. Beneš, Memoirs of Dr. Eduard Beneš: From Munich to New War and New Victory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), p. 219. Emphasis in original.
83. Ibid., pp. 219, 220.
84. Ibid., pp. 320–334.
85. S. Grant Duff, The Parting of Ways: A Personal Account of the Thirties (London: Peter Owen, 1982), p. 135.
86. H. Ripka, The Future of the Czechoslovak Germans (London: Czechoslovak-British Friendship Club, 1944), pp. 13–15.
87. New York Times, September 10, 1948.
88. Quoted in Ripka, Future of the Czechoslovak Germans, p. 16.
89. Jaksch to Beneš, June 22, 1942, quoted in Beneš, Memoirs of Dr. Eduard Beneš, p. 307.
90. W. Jaksch, Can Industrial Peoples Be Transferred? The Future of the Sudeten Population (London: Sudeten Social Democratic Party, 1943), p. 10.
91. Jaksch to Roberts, February 1, 1945, FO 371/47083.
92. Minute by F. Warner, February 24, 1945, FO 371/47083.
93. Bryant, Prague in Black, p. 210.
94. B. Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution Against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 239.
95. Ripka to R. Schoenfeld, April 20, 1945, U.S. Embassy Czechoslovakia, Classified General Records, 1945–1957, RG 84, Entry 2378A, 350/54/13/03, box 4, NARA.
CHAPTER 2. THE VOLKSDEUTSCHE IN WARTIME
1. J. R. Sanborn, “‘Unsettling the Empir
e’: Violent Migrations and Social Disaster in Russia During World War I,” Journal of Modern History 77:7 (June 2005): 290–304.
2. D. Bloxham, “The Great Unweaving: The Removal of Peoples in Europe, 1875–1949,” in R. Bessel and C. B. Haake, eds., Removing Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 175.
3. S. O’Rourke, “Trial Run: The Deportation of the Terek Cossacks 1920,” in Bessel and Haake, Removing Peoples, pp. 255–279.
4. T. Martin, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” Journal of Modern History 70:4 (December 1998): 815.
5. J. Burds, “The Soviet War Against ‘Fifth Columnists’: The Case of Chechnya, 1942–4,” Journal of Contemporary History 42:2 (April 2007): 272.
6. R. Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 46.
7. “Agreement Concluded at Munich, September 29, 1938, between Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy,” art. 7, in M. Curtis, ed., Documents on International Affairs 1938, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), pp. 289–291.
8. J. B. Schechtman, European Population Transfers 1939–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 57.
9. See G. Aly and S. Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutschen Pläne für eine neue europäische Ordnung (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1991), pp. 394–440.
10. Quoted in A. B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), p. 196.
11. C. Jansen and A. Weckberger, Der “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in Polen 1939/40 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), p. 25.
12. V. O. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), p. 95; F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 616–7.
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